Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

April 06, 2019 Happy as Lazzaro, Top Girls, Damian Barr, The Victim, Ruskin and Turner
Award-winning Italian film Happy as Lazzaro is a tale of human unkindness in a remote Italian Village where time stands still, but not in the same way for everyone
Caryl Churchill's play Top Girls is revived by The National Theatre; is it hard not to view it nowadays as a period piece?
Damian Barr's debut novel: You Will Be Safe Here is set in two separate parts of South Africa's troubled history
The Victim is a new 4-part drama on BBC1., following the plaintiff and the accused in a Scottish court case. Can it provide a new twist on the much-worked-over TV formula of crime and courtroom drama and police procedural?
A new exhibition at York Art Gallery looks at the work of John Ruskin and the influence of JMW Turner.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Meg Rosoff, Emma Woolf and John Mullan. The producer is Oliver Jones.
Podcast Extra Recommendations
Meg: The Alarming Palsy of James Orr by Tom Lee and Don McCullin's Tate Britain exhibition
John: Call My Agent on Netflix
Emma: 5 Live's podcast Paradise
Tom: English Baroque Choir
49 min
March 30, 2019 Dumbo, Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, Van Gogh and Britain, Ewan Morrison, Sean Scully
Disney's latest live action remake of one of their classic cartoons is Dumbo, reimagined by Tim Burton.
Grief Is The Thing With Feathers was a novel by Max Porter and has now been adapted for the stage by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy. It has just opened at the Barbican in London.
Vincent Van Gogh lived in London for a few years and Tate Britain is staging an Exhibition Van Gogh and and Britain looking at the artists who influenced him, his own work and the artists he has influenced.
Ewan Morrison's novel Nina X is a kidnap story about a young girl who was brainwashed by a Maoist cult before eventually being rescued and rehabilitated.
British artist Sean Scully is one of Britain's richest artists and BBC2's Arena has followed him for a year, painting and creating and opening exhibitions of his work around the world.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are John Tusa, Deborah Moggach and Alex Preston. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast Extra recommendations
Deborah: Judges Lodgings in Presteigne
John: The Way We Live Now by Trollope
Alex: Standing At The Sky's Edge at The Crucible in Sheffield
Tom: Wild Swans by Jung Chang
51 min
March 23, 2019 Pose on BBC Two; Us; Jews, Money, Myth; Pepperland; The Parade
Jordan Peele’s debut feature film, Get Out, won him an Oscar for best original screenplay. His new film Us is also a horror film, features a score by Michael Abels and stars Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide Wilson whose childhood obsession with the Hands Across America commercial reverberates through the film.
American tv drama Pose on BBC 2 features the largest transgender cast of any commercial, scripted TV show and trans writers Janet Mock and Our Lady J worked on the script alongside the show’s creators, Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals. Ryan Murphy’s previous TV credits include Glee, Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story. Pose is set in 1987–88 and looks at the juxtaposition of several segments of life and society in New York: the African-American and Latino ball culture world, the downtown social and literary scene, and the rise of the yuppie Trump milieu.
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He has written 14 books, including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What Is the What, The Circle and Heroes of the Frontier. His new novel The Parade tell the story of two foreign contracters who are sent to finish a highway in an unnamed country which is emerging from decades of war into a fragile peace.
Jews, Money, Myth at the Jewish Museum in London is a major exhibition exploring the role of money in Jewish life. Art work included Rembrandt's first masterpiece Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver and new commissions by Jeremy Deller and Doug Fishbone.
American choreographer Mark Morris's Pepperland premiered at Liverpool’s Sgt Pepper at 50 festival in 2017 and is a collaboration between Morris and composer Ethan Iverson inspired by the Beatles iconic album. It is described as an "exuberant new dance work, visually on the cusp of Carnaby Street and Woodstock, it teases out the album’s colourfully avant-garde heart and eccentric charm, and resounds with all the ingenuity, musicality and wit for which the Mark Morris Dance Group is known.” Ethan Iverson composes a score featuring six idiosyncratic, jazzy reinventions of the original Beatle songs, including A Day in the Life, When I’m Sixty-Four, Penny Lane (originally meant to be on album, With a Little Help From My Friends and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club, and is performed live by a seven-piece band.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kate Bassett, Kit Davis and Don Guttenplan . The producer is Hilary Dunn
55 min
March 16, 2019 MK Gallery, Benjamin, Northern Ballet's Victoria, Sadie Jones, Memes and Selfies on BBC4
Simon Amstell directs his first cinema release - Benjamin. The title character is a thinly-disguised version of himself with nervous lack of self esteem who is directing a film about himself. It's all very meta but is it marvellous?
Milton Keynes has just reopened its art gallery. Much enlarged and architecturally improved, the first exhibition there is The Lie Of The Land, charting how the British landscape was transformed by changes in free time and leisure
The bicentenary of Queen Victoria's birth has seen lots of artistic projects to mark the moment. Norther Ballet has commissioned a work by choreographer Cathy Marston which looks at the Queen's life through her relationship with her youngest daughter.
Sadie Jones won the Costa First Novel award for her book The Outcast and her latest The Snakes is set in contemporary London and Burgundy.
BBC4 marks the 30th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web with programmes including Me My Selfie and I presented by Ryan Gander and How To Go Viral: The Art of the Meme With Richard Clay
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Ellen E Jones, Jen Harvie and Toby Lichtig . The producer is Oliver Jones
PodcastExtra recommendations
Jen: Carolee Schneemann and Katherine Araniello
Ellen: The Dropout podcast
Toby: Max Cooper and Country by Michael Hughes
Tom: James Mays' BBC documentary on Hornby Trains
50 min
March 09, 2019 Alys Always, Ray and Liz, Max Porter: Martin Parr, ITV's The Bay
Nicholas Hytner's new production at London's Bridge Theatre is Lucinda Coxon's play Alys Always, based on Harriet Lane's novel. A journalist decides to set her sights on a joining the exalted circle of a grieving best-selling author.
Ray and Liz is the debut film from photographer Richard Billingham; weaving a story from his 1996 collection of autobiographical portraits of his hard-drinking and hard smoking parents living on the margins of society in a Black Country council home.
Max Porter's new novel Lanny is a follow-up to his much-lauded debut Grief Is The Thing With Feathers. A magical child communicates with the present and a mysterious past
Photographer Martin Parr has an exhibition. Only Human at London's National Portrait Gallery combining old and previously unseen works.
ITV's police drama The Bay is set in the picturesque surroundings of Morecambe, Lancashire. Might it become the new Broadchurch?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Christopher Frayling, Charlotte Mullins and Emma Jane Unsworth. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast Extra recommendations:
Christopher: If Beale Street Could Talk and Moonlight. Also The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Emma-Jane: The Good Immigrant USA by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman
Charlotte: Studio Voices by Michael Bird and The National Sound Archive
Tom: the disputed Caravaggio at the Colnaghi Gallery
48 min
March 02, 2019 What They Had, Dressed, Renaissance Nudes, Maggie Gee, Mother Father Son
Hilary Swank stars in What They Had; a film which deals with the effects Alzheimer's Disease can have on the family of a loved one
Dressed was a big hit in Edinburgh last year, winning a Fringe First Award. It investigates the healing power of clothes. Following a traumatic experience, a young woman decides to create her entire wardrobe of clothes herself as her own way of coping
The latest exhibition at London's Royal Academy looks at Renaissance Nudes. Transferring from The Getty Centre in LA, it has many extraordianry works which have never come to the UK before.
Blood is Maggie Gee's new novel. About a deputy head-teacher on the run after her father has been found badly beaten and bloodied. He had plenty of people who loathed him but his daughter Monica falls under suspicion
It's more than 3 decades since Richard Gere made a TV series. In Mother Father Son on BBC2, he plays the patriarch of a super-powerful media mogul with personal family problems
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Rosie Boycott, Tom Dyckhoff and Muriel Zagha. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcastextra recommendations:
Rosie: the joy of making pots, The novels of T C Boyle and The Uninhabitable Earth
Tom D: The music of Talk Talk
Muriel: The Christian Dior Exhibition at The V+A, films about birth, The Geneva Ceramics Museum
Tom S: The York Museum Ceramics collection, The Dropout podcast
52 min
February 23, 2019 Capernaum, Shipwreck, Nico Walker, Elizabethan miniatures, Pappano's Greatest Arias on BBC4
Capernaum was filmed on the streets of Lebanon, using non-professional actors including the child lead. It has gone on to win the Palme d'Or winner and is hotly tipped for the Foreign Language Oscar
Shipwreck is American plawright Ann Washburn's latest play to premiere at London's Almeida Theatre. It's vehemently anti-Trump, but does the polemic get in the way for our reviewers?
Nico Walker's novel Cherry tells his own - thinly disguised - life story. Born in Cleveland served in the US military in Iraq and returned home suffering from PTSD. developed heroin addiction, robbed banks to support his habit and ended up in jail. And that's where Walker is right now, serving out the last 2 years of his 11 year sentence for armed robbery. Is it grim, gripping or ghastly?
The National Portrait Gallery in London is staging an exhibition of Elizabethan miniatures. Exquisite small portaits of figures of the day; bring a magnifying glass!
Papanno's Greatest Arias: the director of London's Royal Opera House explores the attraction and technique involved in these vocal set pieces
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kathryn Hughes, Barb Jungr and Boyd Tonkin. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast choices:
Barb recommends And Breath Normally on Netflix and Antti Tuomainen
Boyd recommends Harald Sohlberg at The Dulwich Picture Gallery
Tom recommends Great News on Netflix
Kathryn recommends tidying up
49 min
February 16, 2019 Rembrandt, A Private War, American Clock, Robert Menasse, Traitors
To mark 350 years since Rembrandt's death The Rijksmuseum's in Amsterdam is staging a major exhibition of all his works in their collection.22 paintings, 60 drawings and more than 300 best examples of Rembrandt’s prints
A Private War is a film about the war correspondent Marie Colvin, who reported on conflicts around the world and was killed in Homs in Syria in 2012
Arthur Miller's play The American Clock, set in New York City in 1929, has just opened at The Old Vic Theatre in London. It's not revived very often: is that for a good reason?
Austrian author Robert Menasse's latest novel The Capital won The 2017 German Book Prize. Set around The European Commission it's a story full of tragic heroes, manipulative losers and involuntary accomplices.
Traitors on Channel 4 - a spy thriller set in London at the end of the Second World War and the beginning of The Cold War
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Tracy Chevalier, Miranda Carter and Terence Blacker. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast recommendations
Miranda recommends Mercury Rev's album The Delta Sweete and Game of Thrones
Tom recommends: Storyville - Conroy Under The Wire on iPlayer
Tracy recommends: Clemency Burton Hill's book- Year of Wonder and especially Unsent Love Songs by Elena Kats Chernin
Terence recommends: walking in the Waveny Valley
51 min
February 09, 2019 If Beale Street Could Talk, Home I'm Darling, Tessa Hadley, George Shaw exhibition, David Bowie
Oscar-tipped If Beale Street Could Talk is directed by Barry Jenkins who won Best Picture in 2016 for Moonlight... A woman in Harlem embraces her pregnancy while she and her family struggle to prove her fiancé is innocent of a crime
Katherine Parkinson stars in Home I'm Darling, recently opened at London's Duke of York Theatre, as an ideal 1950s housewife living in the present day
Tessa Hadley's newest novel Late In The Day. The death of a close friend in a tight circle of long-term friends throws all the remaining relationships into sharp relief
The painter George Shaw - famed for his realist suburban subject matter has a new exhibition opening at the Holburne Museum in Bath
A new BBC2 documentary David Bowie: Finding Fame investigates how David Robert Jones became David Bowie using previously unseen footage, interviews with friends and lovers and correspondence that is less than flattering.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Susie Boyt, Irenosen Okojie and Pat Kane. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast extra recommendations:
Irenosen: Russian Doll on Netflix
Tom: Ruskin Exhibition at 2 Temple Place
50 min
February 02, 2019 Can You Ever Forgive Me? You Know You Want This, Cost of Living, A Place That Exists Only in Moonlight, Eating With My Ex
In Can You Ever Forgive Me? Melissa McCarthy stars as Lee Israel, the best-selling biographer of celebrities such as Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. In the early 1990s - when she was in her early 50s - Lee found herself unable to get published because she had fallen out of step with the marketplace. Unable to pay the rent (or the vet bills for her beloved cat) she turned her art form to deception, aided by her loyal friend Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant).
You Know You Want This is the debut collection of short stories from Kristen Roupenian whose short story, Cat Person, became a viral sensation after being published by the New Yorker in December 2017. It became their most read story ever, with more than 2.6 million hits and counting. Included in this collection alongside 11 new stories which are described as examining "the pull and push of revulsion and attraction between people."
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living receives its highly anticipated UK Premiere at Hampstead Theatre starring Adrian Lester and directed by Ed Hall. John, a wealthy, brilliant, and successful PhD student with cerebral palsy, hires Jess, a recent graduate who has fallen on hard times, as his new carer. Across town, truck driver Eddie attempts to support and re-engage with his estranged wife, Ani, following a terrible accident that has left her quadriplegic. As four very different lives collide and entwine, roles are unapologetically flipped, reversed and exposed - who is actually caring for whom?
A Place That Exists Only in the Moonlight: Katie Paterson and JM Turner at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate is the largest UK exhibition of Scottish artist Katie Paterson to date - paired by the artist with a group of works by JMW Turner. Works by Paterson included in the exhibition are Vatnajökull (the sound of), Earth-Moon-Earth and a new work, Cosmic Spectrum, the result of working with scientists Paterson creates a spinning wheel which charts the colour of the universe through each era of its existence.
And a look at two recent reality television releases; the BAFTA nominated BBC 3 series Eating With My Ex - in which former couples are reunited over dinner to pick over the bones of their failed relationships - and Channel 4's Flirty Dancing which aims to match singletons based on their love of dance. Each hopeful will learn half a routine, taught by Dancing on Ice judge and Diversity star Ashley Banjo, which they will perform as a couple when they meet for the first time.
Podcast extra recommendations
Simon: Paul Weller - True Meanings, Fiddler On the Roof at The Menier Chocolate Factory, David Bramwell- The Cult of Water
Kate: Pamela by Samuel Richardson and Fleabag on BBC3
Alex: Tessa Hadley -Late In The Day
Tom: Peep Show on All 4 and Karl Marlantes -Matterhorn
53 min